Don’t rehab West Garfield Park Save A Lot, neighbors say; they want new building

An out-of-state company that’s promised to transform neglected grocery stores in Chicago has hit a snag on the West Side before even getting started.

The company, Yellow Banana, took over several Save A Lot grocery stores throughout Chicago in 2022, including one at 420 S. Pulaski Road in the West Garfield Park neighborhood.

That location is the lone grocery in the West Side neighborhood, but it’s marred with problems. Evidence of rat infestations there date to 2011, according to city records, and in early 2022, the persistent rat problem caused the store to close. 

It reopened after the Ohio-based grocery company assumed control. Over a year later, they said they will begin rehabbing the store — but a group of local residents say the building is too far gone for any renovation or repairs to restore shoppers’ trust.

“The owner told us it was going to be a rehab — a new refrigeration system, coolers, signage,” said Talei Thompson, founder of the Westside Multi-Block Club Association, recalling a community meeting the company held in May. 

“It sounds great,” he said. “But it’s like putting a Band-Aid over a terrible wound. We need a new building, a new store on that corner.”

The company did not respond to multiple requests for comment asking for details of the rehab, but according to city records, Yellow Banana was issued a permit on March 24 to “replace toilet room fixtures, wall and floor finishes” and “construct [a] new exterior entry.” 

“HVAC Units and ductwork, doors, security gates, ceilings, and lighting [will] remain in lieu of demolition,” according to the permit. 

The rehab is funded with help from the city, which in November 2022 issued $13.5 million in city subsidies to the company to purchase and revitalize six shuttered or run-down Save A Lot grocery stores, including the West Garfield Park store. 

Thompson said the Yellow Banana executives said the rehab would start soon, but did not provide an exact date. 

After meeting with the company, the block club association, which includes about a dozen clubs with dozens of members in all, held their own meeting. They agreed almost unanimously that just rehabbing the building won’t make it sanitary.

The association sent a letter to the company on June 12 stating that position, along their reasons. The letter was also sent to Mayor Brandon Johnson and local City Council members Monique Scott (24th Ward) and Jason Ervin (28th).

The company did not respond to a request for comment on the letter. No city officials responded to a request for comment about the letter, either. 

After over a year of management by the out-of-state company, the association also took umbrage with the fact that little seems to have changed at the grocery.

“You can just smell it,” said Kimberly Muhammad, a member of a local block club, “the rats, the bad food, the drippings, it’s ridiculous.”

Muhammad stopped shopping at the store earlier in the year after being unable to find “an onion that wasn’t squishy” or “lettuce that wasn’t wilted,” but she lives nearby and said she often observes the state of the store and its back alley.

“They don’t secure the garbage, they don’t secure the loading dock,” she said. “I’ve watched at seven in the morning, people shooting drugs, urinating and defecating in the place where they load the food.”

A video Thompson took in early July shows rotting food and garbage strewn throughout the alley. Decades of such conditions led the entrenched rat problem, the association said.

Muhammad, who grew up nearby, wishes the store could be like it was when her mom would send her there at age 7 to pick up staples for the family. 

“When you walked in the door, it was clean,” she said. “The workers were pleasant. It was fresh, it was good quality food.”

That’s exactly how it should be, Thompson said. He dreams of a future where the grocery store might resemble the Mariano’s in Bronzeville.

“That is definitely a social gathering spot,” he said. “You sit down, have a glass of wine, see your neighbors and talk. I have never felt this way about my grocery store, not at one time in my life.”

After so many decades of neglect, the changes are welcome, according to the association — they’re just not nearly enough to bring back shoppers. They hope the company will listen to them and come up with a new plan.

“They’re doing what they can to make sure that’s better,” Thompson said, but a better approach is needed. “Don’t just tell us what you’re coming to do — sit down and ask us.”

Michael Loria is a staff reporter at the Chicago Sun-Times via Report for America, a not-for-profit journalism program that aims to bolster the paper’s coverage of communities on the South Side and West Side.